2 Council and 2 Assembly Races Go to Voters Today

By JONATHAN P. HICKS

Published: February 25, 2003

Candidates in four special elections in Brooklyn and the Bronx worked feverishly into the night yesterday, with their staffs making phone calls, putting together car pool operations and placing final touches on efforts to draw voters to the polls today.

Two of the special elections are for City Council seats, one in Brooklyn and one in the Bronx, and the other two races are for Assembly seats in each of those boroughs. The Assembly contests are to fill the terms of incumbents who resigned, and the City Council races are to fill the terms of members who were elected to the State Senate in November.

By far the most hotly contested races are the two for City Council, which are by law nonpartisan elections in which candidates are barred from running on the ballot lines of established political parties.

In the Bronx, former State Senator Pedro Espada Jr. and his rival, Kenneth Padilla, a Democratic Party district leader, were broadcasting the last day of campaign commercials on cable television channels in that borough and making last-minute pitches for support to capture the seat representing Parkchester, Soundview and Classon Point.

''I'm doing nothing but knocking on doors,'' said Mr. Espada, who lost his State Senate seat last year to former City Councilman Ruben Diaz Sr. ''We've already identified who is going to vote for us. The issue for us now is to be sure to get them out to vote.'' Mr. Espada, a longtime foe of the Democratic Party organization in the Bronx, has been facing strong competition from Mr. Padilla, an assistant dean at the Rutgers University School of Law who has been supported by nearly all the Democratic officials in the borough as well as by several labor unions. Mr. Padilla spent last night knocking on doors and greeting subway riders, urging people to vote.

The other hotly contested Council race is for the seat representing the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst, where five candidates are seeking to succeed Martin J. Golden, who was elected to the State Senate last November.

The race in the 43rd Council District has generated particular attention in part because one candidate, Vincent Gentile, a Democrat, lost his State Senate seat to Mr. Golden, a Republican. Also in the race are candidates who are relatively well known to residents of the district, which also includes Dyker Heights.

One candidate is Joanne Seminara, who ran unsuccessfully for the Council seat in two earlier races. The others are Carlo A. Scissura, the vice president of Community School Board 20 and a former aide to Mr. Gentile; Stephen Harrison, a lawyer and chairman of Community Board 10, and Rosemarie O'Keefe, who was commissioner of the Community Assistance Unit under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

A special election for an Assembly seat in the Bronx is considered far less competitive. In that race, Michael Benjamin, who is on leave from his job as the deputy chief clerk of the Board of Elections in the Bronx, is the Democratic candidate to complete the term vacated by longtime Assemblywoman Gloria Davis. In January, Ms. Davis resigned from her seat in the State Assembly and pleaded guilty to bribery charges. Eric Stevenson, a staff member in the office of the Bronx borough president, will be on the Independence Party line. And Claudia Nisbett, who served as an aide to Ms. Davis, is running on an independent line she formed.

That 79th Assembly District, which includes the Morrisania and Claremont Village sections of the Bronx, is a heavily Democratic area where that party's nomination is tantamount to victory.

Similarly, the 55th Assembly District, in the East New York and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods of Brooklyn, is a highly Democratic area. In that district, the Democratic candidate is William F. Boyland Jr., a Democratic district leader who is also an administrator at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center. Mr. Boyland is running to succeed his father, who resigned in December.

In that race, Abdur Rahman Farrakhan, the president of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Tenants Association, is running on the Republican and Conservative lines. And Reginald H. Bowman, president of a real estate management group, is running on an independent line that he formed.